The Charmers

  “Oh no. I just—but I’ve always thought it would be nice to understand how to arrange them properly,” said Christine, glowing under the interest in the heavy dark face and the kindness in the pouched, bloodshot eyes. He threw up his hands.

  “Oh, my God. Now promise me you’ll never have any lessons. If you knew how refreshing those great country bunches are—and the grass, the grass was an inspiration, I wish you could come down to my showrooms and arrange the flowers for me, the people who do it never seem to get them quite right … promise me you won’t waste your money on lessons,” he implored, leaning towards her. She almost felt the faint heat from his thick body, coming at her across the gap that separated them, and was a little embarrassed by his intense manner.

  “All right,” she said, laughing, “I won’t.”

  “Darling …” said Antonia, turning her head, “what are you going on at Christine about … the flowers? Aren’t they lovely, she’s our clever girl, aren’t you?” smiling at Christine. He had taken out a flat gold watch and was looking at it. “And you can put that away, Nigel. It isn’t ten yet.”

  “I know, darling, I’m desolate at having to, but honestly I must. You know what he’s like if one’s late. So touchy. I sometimes feel if I have to take one more scene I shall quietly die.”

  This conversation went on in a rapid undertone, while the two pairs of eyes, the large sapphire ones and those small and richly grey as water-rinsed pebbles stared into each other and painfully smiled.

  “Why take them at all?”

  “Now, darling … How many more times have we got to have this one out?”

  “Well at least say something to the child. It’s supposed to be her party.”

  He glanced across the room to where Glynis Lennox, roused from apparent dozing by the conversation between Mrs. Traill and the three actors, was now sitting upright on her tuffet and listening with a solemn expression.

  “Why in God’s name does she dress like that? It’s an outrage. She’s exactly like that early photograph of Mrs. Pat that used to be in my mother’s sitting-room. She could look wonderful.”

  “Go and tell her so. Clive adores her but I can’t get near her; those clothes put me off so.”

  “All right. But then I really must run.”

  He got up heavily—Christine’s first thought about him had been that here was a man giving much time and planning to not looking elderly—and went across the room to Glynis and squatted in front of her. Her enormous dark eyes flew round and fitted themselves, startled, on his face.

  “Have you ever heard of an actress called Mrs. Pat Campbell?” he demanded.

  “Of course. Paula Tanqueray.” Glynis retorted, so clearly that most people stopped talking and turned towards them.

  “You’re exactly like her. But exactly. My mother had a big photograph of her in her sitting-room and I used to worship it when I was six … Now if I make you a red dress, very dark red, and give it you for a present, will you burn those truly terrible boots and wear it?”

  “Yes, I will. And thank you very much,” she said, keeping her eyes on his face. Her tone was rather cold.

  “I should like to make it à la princesse. But if I did I suppose you wouldn’t have the guts to wear it. Or would you?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said.

  “Without knowing what à la princesse means?” beginning to smile.

  For the first time, Glynis’s composure wavered slightly. “I—isn’t it fitting to the body, without a join at the waist?” she asked, also beginning to smile.

  “That’s right, put briefly.” He struggled up; the squatting position had been trying. “It’s a romantic fashion; and you’ll look as if you were in fancy dress. But you’ll also look like Mrs. Pat come to life again … I’ll put ruching at the neck, a low neck, and elbow sleeves, very puffed … and you’ll wear it? Promise?”

  She nodded, laughing. Everybody had crowded round them, and someone started to clap. Rooth bowed ironically. “Thank you, thank you one and all, ladies and gentlemen, and goodnight. Sweet Antonia, sweet Fabia, sweet Diana, thank you for a lovely party. Good-night, young Stella,” to Glynis.

  Smiling regally, he walked out of the room with Antonia. Christine was a little disappointed that he went past without looking at her or saying anything.

  “Thank God,” a man’s voice muttered: Christine could not be quite sure whose it was.

  “Oh, I think he’s ever so charming,” she said ardently, to Clive, who stood near her.

  “Yes. He’s not a bad chap,” Clive said, and though dampened by his moderate tone she told herself that he couldn’t have made that remark. “A bit trying sometimes, but aren’t we all?”

  Mrs. Traill was saying kindly, “There, Glynis. Aren’t you lucky! A frock from the House of Rooth.”

  “One of the last sane ones it’s likely to make,” said Diana, “and therefore will have scarcity value—if any of us care.”

  “Oh, come,” one of the actors said.

  “Well, he sickens me. Keeping Antonia on a string.” Diana sank her voice to a hurried drone, so that Mrs. Marriott, who was being given a fresh drink, could not possibly hear. “She isn’t in love with him, of course. I doubt if she could be with anyone. She’s a darling but nothing but a clothes-horse, but she wouldn’t at all mind marrying him. They’ve been great and good friends for years and I think he’s often hinted at it. But now he’s besotted with some little cockney boy who designs for him, and heaven knows how it’ll end.”

  “Well—it’ll end,” said the actor.

  He turned to Glynis. “So you’re going to start taking the bread out of our mouths in a year or two, are you?” She nodded, sparkling up at him silently with a complete change of personality: she never intended to come to life only when men spoke to her; she knew that it was bad policy and bad manners; but it happened in the same way that she breathed. They were beginning to chat, when—

  “Are you interested in clothes, Glynis?” Mrs. Marriott asked across the room, in a voice that sounded remote, as if relayed from some mountain sanctuary.

  “No, I’m not, Mrs. Marriott. I hate them,” Glynis said, looking straight at her.

  Antonia, who had just come back into the room, started violently. Clive’s sensitive face managed to look anxious and amused, and proud, all at once; everyone had reseated themselves on the departure of the celebrity, and there was the slightest sensation of relaxation.

  Chapter 10

  “WELL, IF YOU’RE going to wear a ‘princesse’ dress, you’ll have to put on some weight,” Mrs. Traill said. “No, I mean it, Glynis. I’m speaking now as an artist. You need it here,” she sketched a movement about her own slight bosom. “It’s more feminine.”

  “Bustiness is no advantage to a serious actress. But I can always put it on if I have to, for a part. I put it on easily.”

  “You see—dedicated,” Clive said gravely aside to James, who also looked very serious.

  “You don’t eat enough, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Marriott, arranging the silver gauze stole and still speaking in the detached voice that seemed to be laying down, not unkindly, some universal law, “I was talking to Lucy Verinder this morning—you remember Lucy, Antonia, we used to stay at her palazzo in Istria when you were a little thing—her youngest girl is sharing a flat with three others in Chelsea somewhere, and she seems to live on those tins of spaghetti I’m told you can buy for sixpence—marvellous value, I suppose, but they cannot be nourishing at that price and it’s so worrying for poor Lucy.” She looked across the room at Glynis. “Now tell us about yourself, my dear—what are your hobbies? Polly, this child who’s sharing the flat in Chelsea, is studying the History of Art at the Guggenheim Institute.”

  “I haven’t any hobbies. I only care about acting, and that isn’t a hobby, it’s my life,” Glynis said.

  “Well, well,” Mrs. Marriott said indulgently. Her flat yellowish-grey eye lingered on the boots.

  “Oh, Glynis—” Mrs. Traill put h
er head on one side, “with so much going on in the world … At your age you ought to feel about these things. They don’t matter to people like me, who’ve opted out and live in a private world of our own, but you ought to feel. You, at you age, ought to be burning about these great questions …”

  Glynis’s voice seemed to have the power of making the room fall quiet; it was not only its youth, contrasting with all the forty and fifty-year-old tones, but the latent power in it, hinting that it could, if she were aroused, shriek with pain or croon with love or chant in triumph. So far, too, she had had the good sense to leave it natural; it was highly unelocutionary.

  So, when she stirred on her tuffet and lifted her head and looked across the room at Mrs. Traill and said: “I do think about those things. Of course I think about them,” another silence followed. This time, the voice was not quite steady.

  She deliberately swept the groups of faces with her thickly-lashed eyes, and began to speak.

  And then and there, into the Long Room filled with flowers and soft light and complex and tired, but still eagerly living, elderly people, stomped The Problems; a global one, a racial one, and two or three of the comparatively minor ones which are nevertheless lashingly active. Round and round, up and down, backwards and forwards they marched, and no one but Glynis uttered a word; not even Mrs. Marriott, who was the only person to make a slight movement of the lips once or twice or start with a “But—” that got no further. And it went on for nearly ten minutes.

  Glynis stopped talking abruptly. She took a biscuit off a plate and sipped her wine and was silent, staring into the distance, and her silence had the quality of more, and yet more, apocalyptic speech.

  James, who was hospitably suspending a bottle over her glass, caught a tiny shake of the head from her father and unobtrusively set it down again.

  The silence—not an impressed one, Glynis felt—was broken by Mrs. Marriott. She adjusted the silver gauze, and said equably :

  “Really, my dear—I know your father will understand this and forgive me if I speak frankly—do you realise that if you—er—go on like that no one who is anybody will ever ask you anywhere? You cannot possibly have any idea of how it sounds to someone of my generation. All the time you were talking I was wondering what old Lady Clontarf (though she is very old she still takes an active interest in her Lepers and her Deprived Children) would have said to a girl of your age dominating the conversation in a roomful of grown-up people—well, of course, in her day such a thing could never have happened. It would have been unthinkable. She was the finest hostess of her generation and she set the model for thousands of women who could never, of course, have afforded her beautiful house or her men-servants, but who liked to keep up a standard. I am sure she would be really shocked. World affairs! What can a girl of your age know of such things? (It was different for Margot Asquith, of course; she grew up among clever men who ran the country.) What can you possibly know about the difficulties of such men, many of whom are old enough to be your grandfather who are giving their lives, and in some cases their health, to try and settle these—er—terrible questions? I advise you to concentrate on your acting. If you really get on, you will give a lot of harmless pleasure to hard-working people. I am very fond of a good play myself. James, may I have some more of your delicious brandy?”

  Glynis, after exchanging a long look with her mentor, slowly lowered her face on to her knees until it was hidden. Its expression, before it disappeared in hair and dusty leather, was one of stony calm.

  Clive went across to Mrs. Marriott with the decanter, with all kinds of expressions on his own face. As he refilled her glass she looked up at him, smiling, and murmured, “You and I are such old friends, I am sure you will forgive me for my little lecture. She’s an attractive child—but really those boots are only fit for the hunting-field—if that. Someone had to do it.”

  Clive, looking slightly hunted himself, muttered something friendly, and then Antonia, holding out a beseeching hand, said softly: “Won’t you sing for us?”

  “Ah, yes,” and “Do,” said everybody, and he went to the piano. Mrs. Marriott lit herself a cigarette and leant back, with a polite expectation on her withered pekinese’s face.

  Christine was divided between sympathy for Glynis and excitement at the immediately forthcoming treat. Poor kid—getting her on to that Bomb-sitting, it was too bad—it was supposed to be her party, wasn’t it?—and suddenly with a murmured, “Excuse me, please,” she got up from her place in the modest corner and, pushing her way carefully past Antonia (who looked up with an irritated surprise that made Christine wish she could sink through the carpet) crossed over to Glynis and sat down by her.

  But she had not the nerve to speak. She wondered if the poor kid was crying? It was what she, Christine, would have felt like doing if anyone had gone for her like that. Not but what she did not (this was how Christine put it to herself, never having become self-conscious about double negatives) agree with Mrs. Marriott. A bit of a girl, carrying on like that! And what nice home would want her? In those boots, and reminding everybody of all those awful things?—at a party, too !

  Then she forgot Glynis, because, out of a ripple of runs and deep chords, the theme of Lost Moonlight came up, and took possession of the audience and the room.

  You probably know Lost Moonlight, and if you are over forty you are fond of it. It was loved during the last war. The theme of the lyric is not original, something of the same kind having been said by Sappho about three thousand years ago, but somehow it goes on being topical. Clive had an unusually pleasing light baritone, apparently untouched by the years, and of course he could put it over to the last nuance. Christine listened in a trance of pleasure, while the young man, and the girl, and the summer moonlight of their lost happiness floated vaguely before her inward eye. Lovely, she thought as she listened, lovely. Yet the delight was not the delight of That Day.

  She became aware of movement beside her; Glynis was lifting her head. Cautiously, afraid to break the spell, Christine glanced at her. Now she was sitting upright, and Christine saw that her eyes were fixed on her father, while a tiny smile of purest pleasure and pride transformed her face—the smile of a little girl who has been allowed to sit up past her bedtime to hear ‘Daddy’s song’. She looked younger even than seventeen.

  A light chord sounded, a last prolonged ripple went up and out into the summer night. Clive looked round, and smiled.

  They were all clapping and calling affectionately—“Thank you, darling.” “Oh, beautiful.” “You’re better than ever.” And as if breaking out irrepressibly, from Diana—“Oh, if only Maurice were here!”

  There was a pause, a kind of wavering silence, and a sound not quite a sigh, from the whole room. “Ah, yes,” someone murmured.

  “Those rotten ‘adapted’ and ‘arranged’ versions—it must be years since I’ve heard it sung what you’d call ‘straight’,” James Meredith said.

  “Who composed it?” Christine turned to Glynis. “Your father?”

  “Daddy! No, he can only sing, bless him. Maurice Condron, a friend of Daddy’s—of all of them. He was killed at Calais, in the war. They gave him a posthumous V.C.”

  “After he had passed on?” asked Christine, with a dim idea of the long word’s meaning.

  “Yes. He really was—a hero. I never knew him, of course.”

  She pressed her lips together suddenly, and got up and went over to the piano, where her father was vamping a gay little air.

  “Daddy, I must go. I’m sorry, but I’m meeting somebody.”

  “Must you, dear? Well—I’ll see you to the bus.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter. I’m being met—thank you all the same.” She turned to Antonia, who was leaning far over the piano picking out ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ with one improbably long finger. The pose revealed her slight breasts, delicately lapped by the black chiffon and suggesting two flowers, rather than a part of the human body meant to feed a child. “I say—d
id he mean that about the dress?”

  “Of course. Nigel always does what he says he’s going to.” Antonia looked up under her brows.

  “Then what’ll I do about it? I mean, when do you think it will be ready?”

  “I simply can’t say, Glynis. You’ll have to be measured and have at least two fittings. And I’ll bring it back here, and put it on you, and show you how to wear it.”

  “Well …” Glynis suddenly smiled broadly, “that’s kind of you … But what is there to show? It’s just putting it on, isn’t it? Do you think it’ll fall off me or something? And how about this ‘measuring’?”

  “I’ll get that done. Look in at Randolph Square one afternoon next week.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got classes until five, every day.”

  “Come in later, when you’ve finished. We’re there till all hours, a dress-house isn’t like some fiddly little office.”

  “Oh, all right. Such a fuss … it’s only a dress.” But her tone was good-tempered.

  “You won’t think that when once I’ve put it on you,” Antonia said. “Nigel is one of the great ones, you know. He set the fashion all over the world, just after the war, for season after season. He and Dior.”

  “But he’s on his way out now, isn’t he? His things are old hat.”

  “His ‘things’ are classic. They’ll last. Now you run along to your date, I’ll see to everything.”

  While these arrangements were being made Glynis had been reaching into the gap behind a sofa, and now fished up a leather jacket, suggesting in its grim blackness and numerous buckles some form of armour, which she slung on. She then faced the company and made a brief speech thanking them for a delightful evening, finishing up by turning and confronting Mrs. Marriott—whose eyes were fixed upon the jacket.

  “I expect I was a bore,” said Glynis, “talking so much, I mean. But it was implied that I take no interest in world affairs and it was my duty to say what I did. I daresay there may be something in what you said. I might think about it. Good-night.” With which, she walked out—beautifully.